


A Little Crush

by draculard



Category: Star Wars: Thrawn Ascendancy Trilogy - Timothy Zahn
Genre: Awkward Crush, Humor, Implied Past Underage, M/M, Masturbation, One-Sided Attraction, Teasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:14:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27703976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: This was worse than the cheesy military romances Samakro’s last girlfriend had adored. Hot mentor? Check. Lovesick protege? Also check. The only difference was that now Samakro was forced to witness it play out in real life with his Senior Captain as one of the main players and no possible way to tune this saccharine grull-shit out.
Relationships: Ba'kif/Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo
Comments: 10
Kudos: 48





	A Little Crush

It was a long trip from the far edge of the Ascendancy back to Csilla, where General Ba’kif was based. Samakro sat shoulder-to-shoulder with Thrawn in the passenger section of the small troop transport, scowling every time the smoothness of the ride was disrupted and he bounced halfway into Thrawn’s lap. Across the aisle from them were Admiral Ar’alani, who was studying her questis with the same intense gaze as Thrawn, and her first officer Wutroow, who was doing absolutely nothing, but kept shooting cheeky smiles Samakro’s way. 

“We’re set to land by five p.m. Csilla Standard Time,” Ar’alani announced without glancing up for her questis. Samakro accepted this information with a disinterested grunt, but Thrawn paused in the middle of whatever he was doing and looked up, his eyes narrowed.

“Will we be returning in the same vessel afterward?” he asked in a measured voice. 

“Yes,” said Ar’alani. After a moment, her eyes narrowed too and she glanced up from her questis slowly to meet Thrawn’s gaze. “Why?”

He shrugged casually, a move which meant his unreasonably broad shoulders were totally invading Samakro’s personal space. He shrugged right back as aggressively as he could and Thrawn seemed to take the hint, shifting farther away in his seat.

“Logistics,” Thrawn said.

Ar’alani raised an eyebrow. “Logistics?”

Thrawn glanced at Samakro and seemed to decide against shrugging again. Turning back to Ar’alani, he said, “I wondered whether we should remove our possessions from the transport once planet-side. That’s all.”

Wutroow and Samakro glanced at each other, nonplussed by the conversation currently being held between their superiors. Ar’alani favored Thrawn with a decidedly unimpressed look.

“You just want to take a different ship,” she said. 

With all three people watching him now, Thrawn seemed to become paradoxically less awkward and more dignified. He stared down his nose at Samakro and then pinned Ar’alani with an aloof glance.

“This troop transport is not, after all, property of either the Springhawk or Vigilant,” he said. “It would be far more efficient for General Ba’kif if we leave this vessel with his convoy on Csilla and return to our ships with a hired shuttle of our own—”

“A passenger shuttle, perhaps?” said Ar’alani, sounding amused. 

Thrawn chose not to respond. Still missing the significance, Samakro glanced between Ar’alani and Thrawn. Wutroow was doing the same thing with undisguised curiosity.

“You don’t like troop transports?” she asked Thrawn. Her voice was polite and far more gentle than Thrawn deserved, as if she assumed he were a basically nice Chiss soldier and not the utter bastard that he was.

“I’m not fond of them,” said Thrawn evenly.

Samakro gave him a beady stare. During their last two days of travel, Thrawn had proven to be an all-around decent bunkmate — although Samakro was loath to admit it. He kept his belongings squared away instead of letting them lie all over the place unsecured. He made his bed each morning and didn’t try to keep Samakro awake with small-talk — or worse, military plans, or _worse_ , art.

Samakro was absolutely certain he’d met the same standards of basic bunkmate decency, so he could think of only one reason why Thrawn might dislike troop transports — that he worried he might not be able to fly it should a battle occur. This option made little sense; he’d been under the impression that Thrawn was some sort of Taharim flying prodigy.

“Might I ask why?” he said, craning his neck to look sideways at Thrawn in their cramped row of seats.

“Too bulky for you?” Wutroow guessed when Thrawn didn’t answer right away. “No maneuverability?”

“Too…” Thrawn hesitated, staring at the ceiling instead of meeting any of their eyes. “Too cramped,” he said.

Ar’alani glanced away from her questis to raise an eyebrow at Thrawn, but it was Samakro who broke the ensuing silence.

“Didn’t peg you for the claustrophobic type,” he said.

Thrawn met his gaze steadily. “I’m not,” he said without any apparent offense. “I simply dislike sharing a room. I’m sure many people do.”

“Uh, yeah…” said Wutroow, her eyebrows furrowed. Beside her, Ar’alani made no attempt to stifle a scoff. “But it’s the Fleet,” Wutroow went on. “You get used to it.”

Thrawn gave her an ambivalent little nod of acknowledgement, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

“Are you saying you’re not used to it?” Wutroow asked, a bit of disbelief worming its way into her voice. “How did you make it to Senior Captain without ever sharing a room?”

“You misunderstand,” said Thrawn. “I have of course shared living quarters before many times. That’s how I know I dislike it.”

“But—” Wutroow started.

“Look,” said Ar’alani crisply, her eyes on her questis. “We’re not going to pay for a passenger shuttle just so you can deal with your little crush in private, Thrawn. We have better things to do with our money. You’ll just have to learn to deal with it.”

Awkward silence descended on the transport. Next to Samakro, Thrawn was staring at the floor, his facial heat so high it was almost worrying.

“Little crush?” asked Wutroow, smiling devilishly. With delicate grace, Thrawn picked up his questis and pretended to absorb himself in work, though Samakro could see that he was just scrolling up and down through his private messages without typing or reading anything.

“Oh, you didn’t know?” said Ar’alani casually. 

“No,” said Wutroow and Samakro at once.

Ar’alani glanced up at them, a shadow of a smirk on her lips. “Well, you’ll see when we get there,” she said.

Get there? To Csilla? Samakro mentally walked himself through the offices where General Ba’kif worked, thinking over any likely candidates. The secretary wasn’t bad-looking, assuming she was still the same one from when he’d last visited years ago. And he’d seen Ba’kif’s aide recently and supposed he was alright, if you liked slender useless-looking men, which he didn’t. He eyed Thrawn, trying to suss out his type, and got absolutely nowhere.

Who on earth would Thrawn be attracted to, besides perhaps a living sculpture or walking portrait of some sort? Was Ar’alani just teasing him? They were old friends, surely they had that type of relationship by now, even if it seemed impossible for someone to be friends with Thrawn.

Samakro was still puzzling it over when their troop transport finally landed and they made their way through the sparsely-decorated halls. Thrawn would be attracted to someone highly competent, he decided, and highly intelligent as well. Most likely, somebody with ambition — someone in a position of power — someone who could be useful to him in some way, filling in his own deficiencies, like a—

They entered Ba’kif’s office.

Like a _mentor_ , Samakro realized, laying eyes on the 6’5” muscle-bound grade-A certified silver fox that was General Ba’kif. He glanced sideways at Thrawn, whose face was perfectly blank, and started to doubt himself at once. No way. No way _Thrawn_ had a crush on General Ba’kif. He’d been right with his first assumption — Ar’alani was just teasing him.

With an easy smile on his face, Ba’kif went around the room, shaking hands with Ar’alani and greeting Wutroow and Samakro with friendly nods. When he got to Thrawn, who was reaching out tentatively for a handshake of his own, Ba’kif hesitated as if in surprise at the gesture and then went for it wholeheartedly, wrapping his fingers around Thrawn’s forearm and lingering there for a moment, squeezing him tight. Samakro could only imagine the amount of body heat coming off Ba'kif's broad hand.

“Senior Captain,” Ba'kif said cheerfully before letting go.

“Mm-hm,” said Thrawn, his voice coming out strangled, his lips evidently glued together. The expression on his face was one of cold disinterest, but the tips of his ears had already turned indigo and were now edging into a shade of purple that made his heatshadow go absolutely wild.

 _For fuck’s sake,_ Samakro thought. It was undeniable. Thrawn had a crush on General Ba’kif.

Throughout the rest of the meeting, the evidence only piled up higher and higher, until it got so obvious that Wutroow and Samakro were sending each other scandalized looks whenever Ba’kif glanced away. He even caught Ar’alani’s eye once by mistake and she gave him a cool look that did little to hide her amusement.

Each time Ba’kif spoke to Thrawn, his blush flared in his cheeks again, then started to fade only when Ba’kif looked away or addressed someone else. When he spoke — and it was necessary that he speak several times before the meeting was over — Thrawn stared down at his questis, or at his fingers (which he was kneading absent-mindedly, a nervous gesture Samakro couldn’t help but catalogue) or at his feet. He studiously avoided Ba’kif’s eyes.

But when Ba’kif looked away to talk to Ar’alani, Thrawn’s eyes snapped up again, drinking in every line on Ba’kif’s face with undisguised longing.

Gag. This was worse than the cheesy military romances Samakro’s last girlfriend had adored. Hot mentor? Check. Lovesick protege? Also check. The only difference was that now Samakro was forced to witness it play out in real life with his Senior Captain as one of the main players and no possible way to tune this saccharine grull-shit out. As the meeting dwindled down to its last seconds, Samakro could almost hear a narrator listing buzzwords in his head: _the loneliness of command_ — _military restrictions_ — _forbidden love._

Gross, gross, _gross_. Thrawn turned his head slightly, following the trajectory of Ba’kif’s large, callused hands as he made an expansive gesture, and in doing so, he accidentally caught Samakro’s eye. Thrawn raised an eyebrow coolly, as if to say, _And what are_ you _staring at?_

Samakro raised an eyebrow back, as if to say, _Why don’t you two get a room?_

Thrawn endured Samakro’s meaningful expression with a quiet dignity that fragmented into a million little pieces when Ba’kif stood and casually touched Thrawn’s shoulder on the way to the door.

“It’s been a productive meeting with you all, as always,” said Ba’kif brusquely. “I look forward to seeing your suggestions play out on the battlefield.”

As one, Ar’alani, Wutroow, and Samakro stood to take their leave. They were straightening their uniforms before Thrawn caught up; he dragged his feet to join them at the door and lingered behind a while longer, forcing them all to wait halfway down the hall. They watched as he spoke to Ba’kif, staring up at him like a lovestruck schoolboy (and hadn’t Thrawn _been_ a schoolboy when Ba’kif met him and made a cadet? Oh god, that wasn’t a line of thought Samakro wanted to go down) and smiling bashfully when Ba’kif laughed and clapped him on the shoulder again.

Thrawn was still blushing by the time he joined them, his eyes far away.

“Well?” said Wutroow brightly. Thrawn’s eyes focused and he frowned at her; Ar’alani bit back a smile.

“Well, I suppose we’d better go,” said Thrawn, sounding puzzled as he took in Wutroow’s smile.

“Yeah, are you two coming with us?” asked Wutroow, gesturing back toward Ba’kif’s closed door. Her smile grew wider. “Or are you staying here so he can bend you over his desk and rail you like you’ve been begging him to do with your eyes ever since we walked in?”

Thrawn stalked past the three of them with a scowl.

* * *

They’d taken their time on Csilla, giving their pilot time to rest while the four of them absconded to Ar’alani’s favorite teahouse for a quick repast. Only when it was well past dark did they return to the troop transport. Samakro retreated to the cramped compartment that served as shared quarters for himself and Thrawn, changing quietly out of his uniform while, outside in the main cabin, Ar’alani and Thrawn re-hashed the meeting’s material in muted voices.

He’d already started to doze off when Thrawn finally joined him. Out of politeness, Samakro kept his eyes closed while Thrawn changed; he listened to the other man climb onto the top bunk and settle down, and for the next twenty minutes, all was well. Samakro’s doze grew heavier, his breathing deep and even as he relaxed; the transport’s metal flooring groaned and shook beneath them as it rose past Csilla’s atmosphere, filling the compartment with the soothing white noise of hyperspace travel.

And then, above him, Samakro heard an innocent-sounding rustle of fabric, followed by a not-so-innocent hitch in breath, followed by the definitely-not-innocent sound of skin on skin as Thrawn took himself in hand.

 _We’re not going to pay for a passenger shuttle just so you can deal with your little crush in private,_ Ar’alani had said earlier. Overhead, Thrawn stifled a gasp, then failed to stifle a moan, and the sound of skin-on-skin stilled for a moment before suddenly growing faster.

As the bunk above him began to creak, Samakro wrapped his pillow around his ears and cursed Ar’alani and her cheapskate war economics to his last breath.


End file.
